The personal memoirs of original Prince guitarist, Dez Dickerson.

For the first time, a member of the Purple One's band shares his experiences from inside the meteoric rise of Prince.

A true insider's look through the eyes of a man who was there. Unlike the many third-party biographies that have been written, this is a first person account of the Prince phenomenon.

From the early days of Pepe's basement to "Little Red Corvette", find out what the real story was.

Includes behind-the-scenes tour stories and never-before-published personal photos from Dez's private collection. This is a MUST for every true Prince fan.

This soft cover book contains 240 pages, plus 8 pages of photographs.


CHAPTER 1-THROWDOWN AT DEL'S

On a bitterly cold January day in Minneapolis, I pulled into the parking lot of Del's TireMart on the West Bank of the Mississippi River, near the U of M campus. I knew when I responded to the ad ("Warner Bros. recording artist seeks guitarist and keyboard player...") that it could only be one person-this Prince kid that I had heard rumors of. There was no one else within 600 miles of my hometown that had a major label deal. I'd never met him-I had been playing guitar in rock bands and power trios for 9 years, travelling all over the Midwest doing clubs, ballrooms, high schools, and anywhere else we could set up. Since Prince had played very few gigs, and we were from opposite sides of the river (he lived in North Minneapolis, and I lived in St. Paul), our paths had never crossed. Like him, I began making music at an early age. I formed my first band at age 14, two weeks after starting guitar lessons. We played our first gig after being together less than a month (a dance at our junior high school- not only did we play for free, but we paid to get in!). By our sophomore year, we had a booking agent, and we were getting out of school early most Fridays to travel to exotic locales like Fairmont, MN, and Storm Lake, IA and play our favorite cover music (Hendrix, Grand Funk Railroad, Cream, etc.). Word started to spread amongst the musician grapevine about this high school kid from St. Paul who played guitar like Jimi. One night, a guy named Bill Lordan, a Minneapolis drummer who had landed a gig with then-huge English Hendrix knock-off Robin Trower, came to one of our shows in a church basement, just to check it out for himself. Over the next 9 years, I started, fronted, and led 8 or 9 bands before I even heard Prince's name. Then the rumors started. There was this 17 year old kid in town who was the next Stevie Wonder. He could play 15 instruments, and wrote incredible songs. It was almost like an urban legend-I never saw him, just heard about him. One day, my younger sister came home with a new album by this kid named Prince. I asked her if I could borrow it from her and check it out. Upon listening, in typical youthful musician arrogance, I thought to myself, "It's OK, but they should have signed me-I could have done a much better record...". Looking back, I'm embarrassed at how full of myself I was, and how much I had to learn. When I rolled into Del's, there were several cars in the parking lot, engines running, folks in their cars trying to keep warm. When I had called about the ad and spoken to Prince's manager, Owen Husney, I got the sense they had already auditioned a lot of folks. I would find out later that I had no idea just how many. I sat in my lime-green Plymouth Sebring, the latest in a series of wanna-be muscle cars that I had owned since age 16. I loved loud things-loud cars, loud music, loud places. The car was kind of an extension of who I was at the time-it screamed to be noticed. And, I guess that's what brought me to Del's-the hunger to be noticed. We all sat for quite a while, when someone (I don't remember who) started going around to all the cars and gathering everyone up to sit in the same car. It was a great idea, since we were all starving musicians who could ill afford to waste gas idling in the parking lot. We all ended up in the same car, chatting and trading stories. I remember sizing people up, determining who I thought 'had it' and who didn't. I was nothing back then if not sickeningly confident. I was one of the few, it seemed, that had already reached fulltime status with playing music. In fact, I would be leaving Del's that day and heading straight out for a gig we were doing in Wisconsin that night. All of us were very curious as to what was about to happen, and annoyed at the fact we were being kept waiting. I couldn't help thinking how angry the rest of my band would be when I showed up late, but couldn't say why... Finally, a full two and one-half hours past the scheduled time, the Entourage showed up. I didn't know any of them-little did I realize that I would end up sharing the experience of a lifetime with a couple of them. Most notably, there was Andre Anderson (Prince's childhood friend, musical partner, and bass player), and Bobby Rivkin (friend and drummer), and manager Owen Husney. Bobby had known Owen for a long time, in that Bobby's older brother David had played in a band with Owen in their teen years. The band had some regional success, and even some national radio exposure, but Owen ended up in the advertising business, and David ended up a recording engineer. Through Bobby's relationship with Owen, he got connected with Prince. Andre was another story entirely. They had been friends since they were kids, and really more like brothers. Andre's mom, Bernadette, had taken Prince in when there were problems with his own family, and he and Andre shared a room. Andre had been with Prince as the Wild Ride of the deal and the recording had begun. It didn't take long to figure out that the quiet, almost painfully shy, diminutive figure at the center of the rush of people was Prince. It was eeiry-no one said a word (no apologies or explainations for the tardiness-which I would find later to be a way of life), but they just opened the door and we all filed in. There were some quick introductions, and then Prince just went over, sat behind a keyboard, and started playing. We kind of determined among ourselves who would go first, and Owen graciously allowed me to go to bat right away, since I had that gig I had to get to. Prince started a riff on the Oberheim polyphonic synth and Hohner Clavinette, and Andre and Bobby soon fell in behind him with a rock-solid groove. I just observed for a few minutes, and fell in playing rhythm. After a bit, without saying a word, Prince nodded to me. At that point, I took a solo. I had been at it long enough to know that less is more, so rather than try to impress him and the room with every note I knew, I played what made sense, ended it, and flowed back into rhythm. After about 15 minute of following this pattern, I apologetically reminded them that I really did need to get going. Prince finally spoke, and said he'd walk me out. Back out in the winter air, Prince asked me lots of question-I remember being struck with how incisive they were for such a young guy (I was 3 years older). He asked about my aspirations (I told him I still desired a solo career someday), my musical tastes, my work ethic. After 10 minutes or so of conversation, we shook hands, he disappeared back into the Tire Mart, and I sped off toward I-94 and the Wisconsin border. I had NO idea how fateful the last few hours would end up being...

http://www.dezdickerson.com/excerpt.htm